


you want to hurt yourself (i'll stay with you)

by princealliance (popoyoy11)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Sad, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 17:22:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20177962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popoyoy11/pseuds/princealliance
Summary: The scent hits first.Tangy, sharp, sour. Traveling up Taeyong's oesophagus unsolicited and unwanted. It’s petal and acid. It’s a rancid odour in his mouth, in his airways.It stings.





	you want to hurt yourself (i'll stay with you)

**Author's Note:**

> Oops my hand slipped.
> 
> General disclaimer: i don't own these people, they're real people please be nice to them
> 
> Hanahaki disease rules in this:
> 
> as long as the love is strong enough and unrequited, you can get it. sort of like cancer and autoimmune disease, nobody knows why and how it happens.

The scent hits first.

Tangy, sharp, sour. Traveling up Taeyong's oesophagus unsolicited and unwanted. It’s petal and acid. It’s a rancid odour in his mouth, in his airways.

It stings.

He forgets to breathe for a while. Before his lungs scream and he bends over, coughing and hacking the taste out of his mouth until eyes water, chest heaving with the effort.

Hands. There are hands on his shoulders and they do little to calm him down. If anything, they block his escape routes. The bodies, the throng of sweaty and drunk teenagers around him suffocates, limits his access to oxygen. He tries to shrug off the offending limbs but they don't _care _that he can't breathe, they want to _know_ what's wrong with him, they're shouting in his ear and it's making him dizzy.

He gasps and groans and the thing inside him only wants out, _out, out. _In his periphery he sees a helping hand. Somebody bats away the hands and gives him a bottle of clean, cool water.

He takes it and stumbles away as fast as he could, hands clambering along the walls.

He takes the stairs two at a time, collapses against the door of the nearest broom closet. His clumsy fingers manages to somehow open it. He leans against the door once he's inside, sliding down weakly to the floor. His chest is burning and tears are streaming down his cheeks. He rips the bottle open and chugs the water down. Only it doesn't want to stay down. Whatever it is inside him fights tooth and nail to be _out, out, out._

And Taeyong retches and retches.

The empty bottle clatters silently beside his hip.

“Fuck,” he curses, staring at the single rose petal on his palm.

-

They say you have a week, from the time the symptoms manifest.

After that it gets worse. The flowers will only grow, grow, grow. It’ll bloom out of your nose, your mouth, your ears.

_It’s a pretty disease._ They say. _A beautiful way to die._

Taeyong doesn’t want pretty.

Taeyong just wants to live.

-

Jaehyun knocks on his window two days later, jumping over the sill with alarming speed.

His best friend approaches him like he's a cornered animal, raises one shaking hand as if he wants to touch Taeyong, but he glances at the minute tremors coursing through it, and changes his mind last minute; balls it against his thigh instead.

Jaehyun's eyes are wet.

“Hyung, is it true?” He whispers hoarsely.

Taeyong swallows. Once. Twice. He tastes only roses on the back of his throat. “Yeah,” Taeyong croaks. “I—um, the doctor says I’m going to have to be hospitalized in two days.”

Jaehyun's eyes scan the room; they darken when they land on the three buckets of flowers on Taeyong's bedside table. It’s the room he’s been sneaking into for years and years and years. The room where they’d spent so much time with each other, time that stretched and pulled like warm taffy, unlimited.

Now a minute feels like a millisecond, and they stand facing each other for aeons. Jaehyun with his red-rimmed eyes. Taeyong with his rosewater scent.

“I—“ Jaehyun finally starts. “I’m—“ but his voice fails him, and so does his legs. Taeyong rushes to him and they fall into each other. Jaehyun grasps at his sides, knuckles turning white. “I’m sorry,” Jaehyun sobs, “I should be the one comforting you, not—“

Taeyong shushes him. “It’s okay, I know you’re scared, I’m scared too.” He doesn’t tell Jaehyun he’s cried himself dry the first two days.

“Why?” his voice cracks. “Why couldn’t it have been me? Why you? Why him—why—“ He tries desperately.

“You know that’s not how it works,” he says gently. Taeyong is surprised by the strength in his own voice. Had it not been for the flowers in his room nobody would guess he's the one whose life is ending. “You know it could happen to anyone, if the love is strong enough.”

Jaehyun looks up at him through wet lashes. “But you have so much to live for,” he whispers, “I only have you. I don’t—I’m not going to—“ He gives out a frustrated noise. He disentangles himself from Taeyong and gives them distance. He goes to the window sill, shaking, still. Takes in deep breaths, counts to ten.

Inside Taeyong's head, he counts with him.

One. Two. Three. Ten. Start again. One. Two.

The silence stretches, hangs heavy between them. With questions, with accusations, with a thousand _what ifs_ and _whys_.

“Okay,” Jaehyun says quietly, finally, after five tens.

“Okay?” Taeyong asks.

He takes Taeyong's hand and squeezes. “Yes, okay. We’re doing this and I’m not leaving you.”

Jaehyun embraces Taeyong then, his wiry arms around Taeyong. Taeyong feels warm, feels like he might make it through tomorrow, feels like Jaehyun might make everything disappear, might do a death-defying feat.

Might make Taeyong okay again.

“Yes,” Taeyong whispers, voice trembling. He closes his eyes, holds Jaehyun closer. “Okay.”

-

The day after that they take Taeyong to a hospital.

Taeyong can’t even speak anymore. There’s only endless streams of flowers flowing from his throat. Each more pungent than the last. It fills the room with a nauseating sweetness. His chest burns constantly, and his body feels more rot than flesh.

Jaehyun holds his hand through the episodes, runs his hand through Taeyong's hair afterwards because he knows it makes him feel better. He reads to Taeyong, his favourite books, talks to him even though Taeyong can only reply with nods and undecipherable noises. He puts on music that Taeyong likes and movies and barely leaves his side.

He never frowns at Taeyong. Just teases him and grins at him like he always does.

Taeyong smiles at him gratefully after every gesture. Clutches Jaehyun's hand with what strength he has left.

Jaehyun is soft and kind. Always, always.

-

At night he climbs up to Taeyong's hospital bed and presses close, murmurs to Taeyong about the things they'd do once Taeyong gets out of the hospital.

"Hyung, we'll go to the beach, yeah? I'll teach you how to body surf. You'll like it," Jaehyun whispers. "And I think learning how to make cream pan will be fun, you like those, don't you?"

Jaehyun's face is buried in Taeyong's hair, so he can't see him properly. His grip on Taeyong is so tight that it'll leave bruises in the morning. It hurts but Taeyong doesn't mind, because—because—

"Maybe we'll go to the zoo again, yeah, hyung? Would you like that?"

Taeyong nods weakly, and believes the things Jaehyun tells him.

For Jaehyun; for himself.

-

On his sixth day, Taeyong starts coughing up nightshades.

He doesn’t open his eyes anymore. Just breathes with too much effort. The rise and fall of his chest painful to Jaehyun's eyes.

In. Hold. Out. Hold. In. Hold. Out. Hold.

Occasionally, he opens his eyes to vomit a batch of jet-black flowers around the breathing tube they’ve installed into him.

Even though he promised not to, Jaehyun can’t stop crying.

-

They’ve decided to use sunflowers for Taeyong's funeral.

Jaehyun can’t hate them even if he tried.

(They were Taeyong's favourite.)

-

He’s sitting in Taeyong's living room when it hits. They'd just driven back from the cemetery. He could still feel the weight of Taeyong's casket on his shoulder, could still recall the coldness of Taeyong's body, the _wrongness_ of it all—when it hits.

The scent. Tangy, sharp, sour. Traveling up his oesophagus unsolicited and unwanted. It’s petal and acid. It’s a rancid odour in his mouth, in his airways.

It stings.

He tries to cover up the coughs as best as he can. He stumbles into Taeyong's old room so he doesn’t bother anybody. In there he hacks his lungs out, he gasps, and tries failingly to breathe.

He knows it’s due some time now.

Surrounded by Taeyong's things, the memory of him, the scent of him, Jaehyun opens his palm.

He laughs when he sees the petal.

It’s a bright, yellow of a sunflower.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this piece sometime ago, and changed it to jaeyong because i felt like it. it's meant to be more of a neil gaimanesque short story/poem so. i hope you enjoyed it though! i know i said no angst in this house but oooops.
> 
> tell me how you think about it in the comments! thank you for reading <3
> 
> catch me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/catchingjaehyun)  
and [markleeshalo](markleeshalo.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
